Tech Thoughts Daily Net News – July 1, 2012

Nexus 7 vs. Kindle Fire or wait for something better? – Mini-tablets are affordable enough that everyone wants one. But which one should you get? Ask Maggie’s Marguerite Reardon offers some advice.

Modern life halted as Netflix, Pinterest, Instagram go down – An outage in Amazon’s cloud means that some of the world’s greatest and most frivolous entertainments are suddenly not available. Immediately, customers whine.

Jelly Bean Impressions: Android’s Most Important Update Yet – Jelly Bean is arguably the most important new version in Android history. More than ever, Google understands what it has to do to make Android a top-notch phone and tablet operating system for ordinary consumers, not just tech-savvy users

Windows Icons Suddenly Looking Generic? Here’s the Fix – A corrupted icon cache can cause your icons to lose their normal appearance. A quick and easy batch file rebuilds the cache in a flash.

How to connect an iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch to your TV – Your iOS device is good for accessing media on the go, but there may be times when you want to share your movies, photos, and music, or play games on a TV. Connecting your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch to your TV is simple, but you have to select the right cables first.

Apple’s Siri wrong 38 percent of the time in test – In a test by analysts Piper Jaffray on a busy Minneapolis street, Apple’s Siri managed to perform searches correctly 62 percent of the time. Oddly, Google’s voice assistant was right 86 percent.

How to set up and use Google Docs offline – Google Drive now lets you access and edit documents when not connected to the Internet. See how to set up and use this new and useful feature.

Linksys Firmware Upgrade for Wi-Fi Routers Angers Some Users – Some users of new Wi-Fi routers from Cisco’s Linksys division complained this week that the company automatically updated the routers’ firmware and pushed them toward a cloud-based administration service they didn’t want.

Chrome Rockets to Top as No. 1 Free App in iTunes – It’s getting decent reviews from users, although a big complaint is the browser now available for iPhone and iPad is slower than Apple’s Safari.

Security:

Cybercrime moves to the cloud – Researchers say criminals are moving their malware heavy lifting from end user PCs to servers in the cloud. The same flexibility and freedom companies get from having their software and services hosted in the cloud is enabling cybercriminals to conduct highly automated online banking theft — without doing much of the necessary information processing on their victims’ own computers.

Google Promises Fix for Google+ Events Spam – Google is rolling out a fix to its social network to stop the influx of spam that hit the newly released Google+ Events feature.

Firefox Security Bug Not a Bug at All – The New Tab feature exposes a user’s travel to secure websites, but it draws the material from a source long present in the browser.

Use Google Now with Caution, Security Experts Say – Google Now, the smart assistant in the latest upgrade of the Android operating system, draws an uneasiness among security experts evaluating the risks the search-based feature for mobile devices brings to businesses.

Company News:

Don’t believe hardware hype, Google is still an ad company – Google doesn’t need to make money from hardware, but it does need hardware to make money from its services. That’s why it designs new hardware.

Polaroid’s New Z2300 Is a Digital Camera with a Built-in Photo Printer – It looks like Polaroid is trying once again to merge classic print cameras and digital cameras with the new Z2300.

ITC delays ruling on U.S. ban of Xbox – The U.S. International Trade Commission has sent the case — related to Motorola patents — back to the ITC judge who recommended the ban, Reuters reports. His reconsideration of the case will probably take months.

Report: Vendors ditch Windows ARM devices over Surface – A new report claims that PC vendors – including Hewlett Packard (HP) – are up in arms over Microsoft’s recent decision to enter the lucrative tablet market with its Surface device.

Webopedia Daily:

Strategic Service Management – SSM – Abbreviated as SSM, a strategic service management is a solution comprised of software, services and knowledge that assist companies in efficiently delivering service commitments. SSM solutions offer comprehensive management, scheduling and planning of service parts and service technicians, the related pricing of such resources, and the real-time, closed-loop management of exceptions that jeopardize a company’s capability to meet customer commitments.

Off Topic (Sort of):

Cracked: 5 Things You Won’t Believe Are Making You Dumber – Tell people that their diets or habits are making them fat or out of shape and they shrug — we hear that crap every day. Tell them that their habits make them stupider and you’re about to have a fight. We all know that our brain is a part of our body, but nobody likes to think of their intelligence as something that can get weak and flabby due to things that are out of our control. Science says otherwise. Studies have shown …

Drones can be hijacked via GPS spoofing attack – Last year a U.S. military drone doing reconnaissance in Iran disappeared. Iranian government officials there said they had steered the device off course by interfering with its GPS signals. Such an attack, called GPS spoofing, had previously been considered theoretical. A research team at the University of Texas at Austin has demonstrated that the GPS signals of an unmanned aerial vehicle can be commandeered remotely. This demonstration highlights security concerns with plans to allow thousands of military and civilian drones in U.S. airspace by 2015.

How to Track Colorado’s Waldo Canyon ‘Super Fire’ (and Others) – As an uncontrolled “super fire” near Colorado Springs rages, high-tech mapping tools are dishing up highly detailed, bird’s eye views of the fire’s scope.

Why Credit Card Companies Will Own Your Grandkids [CHART] – Incredibly, this isn’t an exaggeration. There are people in this situation right now where each payment to their credit card company leaves them owing more. Only in the last few years has the government moved to stop banks from putting people in this cycle of infinite repayment (where the interest and fees are more than the monthly payments).

Porn on Google’s Project Glass Is Inevitable – Google’s glasses-camera demo was but a few minutes old when Twitter started buzzing with the obvious question: Will they be used for porn? It’s Rule 34 of the Internet, of course: if it exists, there will be porn of it.

Today’s Quote:

“With Epcot Center the Disney corporation has accomplished something I didn’t think possible in today’s world. They have created a land of make-believe that’s worse than regular life.”

–    P. J. O’Rourke

Today’s Free Downloads:

Don’t Sleep 2.74 – Don’t Sleep is a small portable program to prevent system shutdown, Standby, Hibernate, Turn Off and Restart. Don’t Sleep does not have to be installed and can be executed easily from the desktop, and can be carried on a small usb-stick or other memory device.

Defpix – Defpix – Defective (dead) pixels tester is a free program that can help you with checking for defective pixels on your LCD screen.